Your wildfire risk score, and how to appeal it (Colorado's new rules)

Last reviewed: July 9, 2026

Since July 1, 2026, Colorado insurers that use a wildfire risk model or score to price, underwrite, non-renew, or surcharge your homeowner’s policy owe you things they never owed you before — in writing, on deadlines. This page is built from the signed law itself (House Bill 25-1182, effective July 1, 2026, applying to policies issued or renewed on or after that date), not from summaries of summaries.

What your insurer now owes you

An annual written notice of your wildfire risk score, and it can’t be a bare number. Under the act, the notice must include:

• a plain-language explanation of the score — including that different insurers use different models, so your score with one company isn’t your score with another;
• the range of possible scores and where your property sits in it;
• why your property got its score — the primary features that drove it;
• the impact each mitigation action could have on your score.

Read that last pair again: the law makes your insurer hand you a property-specific to-do list. The notice tells you what’s costing you and what fixing it would be worth. Keep it — it’s the blueprint for everything below.

Posted discounts. Insurers must publish on their websites the mitigation discounts available, the actions that earn them, and the appeal process. If an insurer doesn’t build mitigation into its model at all, it must give discounts to policyholders who can demonstrate the work instead.

The four deadlines worth knowing

1. New applicant? Your score is due within 15 days of a completed application.
2. Renewing? The score comes with your renewal offer. Non-renewed? It comes with the non-renewal notice.
3. Just finished mitigation work? Request a re-score — a revised score is due within 30 days of your request.
4. Appealing? Written acknowledgment within 10 calendar days, written reconsideration and decision within 30 calendar days. Denied appeals can be forwarded to the state Insurance Commissioner on request.

What counts as mitigation under the law

The act recognizes two kinds of action:

• Property-specific: establishing defensible space, building-hardening measures, or certification from “an entity with expertise in mitigation of properties against wildfire.” (The law names no specific certifier — programs like county assessments and national certifications are examples of this category, not statutory requirements.)
• Community-level: mitigation activities or designations near your property, including forest treatment and fuel-reduction work. If your neighborhood or fire district has done fuel-reduction projects, that counts as evidence too.

This applies to homeowner’s policies, residential condo policies, and multifamily residential housing — including the state’s FAIR Plan.

How to appeal, practically

The law lets you appeal when the score, classification, or applied discount “is inaccurate” and you can provide evidence. The strongest appeal file:

1. Your notice — the insurer’s own list of what influenced the score.
2. Before/after photos of defensible-space work, dated.
3. Contractor invoices describing the work in the law’s language (defensible space by zone, ladder-fuel removal, crown spacing).
4. A county program assessment or certificate — see your county’s page: several Colorado counties run free assessments (Eagle’s REALFire, Boulder’s Wildfire Partners, Grand’s council) whose reports are exactly the third-party documentation an appeal wants.
5. Community-level evidence — your fire district’s or HOA’s fuel reduction projects, chipping-day participation, or a Firewise-type neighborhood designation.

Send it through the appeal channel the insurer is required to post on its website, and calendar the 10- and 30-day clocks the day you submit.

Where the work comes from

If your notice is telling you the score won’t move without actual mitigation — defensible space cut, ladder fuels gone, work documented — that’s what the form below is for. A local mitigation contractor who knows what insurers and county cost-share programs want to see on paper is worth more than the cheapest chainsaw.